Customer Reviews

Minolta Dimage G500 5MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

i've researched Canon 400S Elph, Sony Cybershots, Minolta F100 - all that jazz (see dpreview.com, cnet.com and steves-digicams.com for thorough reviews) and nothing pocketable held up to this Minolta G500 (Olympus left out for consistently poor image quality and construction). Why is the G500 the best?

For starters, 5MP vs. 4 - not always the main concern, but it's easily the finest 5MP in its price range. Sure, Sony has some new 5MPs out that are only about $50 more (although the ones as small as the G500 are around $100 more) but they feel cheap, have inferior reviews, and lack the picture quality of this Minolta. The only real competition for high-res digicams that are highly-pocketable is the Canon Elph 400S, but this Minolta is at least comparable in every respect, and of course it has 25% more megapixels.

Makes fun camera shooting sounds when you snap pics. Gorgeous displays and intuitive controls. Quick and easy... start-up with cool green light on front. Zoom very quick - zips open and shut. great weight to it - not too heavy by any means, but feels solid in your hands - nice ergonomics. I spent $350 - nothing else around that price point compared. Buy it. Peace!

This is a great point & shoot digital. It is very small, fits in your pocket. The lens cover is very convenient. It takes great pictures at 5 megapix. Start up time and time between pics is very fast. The movie made allows you take 30sec audio/vid clips which is very cool and convenient and they come out great. Its nice for those times when you don't have / or dont feel like getting your camcorder out.

My only issue is the red-eye - which seems to happen on all small point and shoots. Most photo software packages allow you to zap out the redeye pretty effectively with the click of a mouse - so it's not a big deal.

Battery life is awesome. I've taken about 15 vids and 100 pics and the battery indicator still reads full-charge; and I always the display (not the viewfinder). My old camera used to chew through 4 AA's after some 30 pictures.

I was going to get the canon s40 which is very comparable but the price is better on this + its 5 megapixle + there is a 25$ credit towards memory card upgrade. You'll need to get a bigger mem card.

There are a couple of other cameras that rank right next to the g500 in features, size and quality. But they rank $150-200 higher in price. There ends some of the debate.

It's usability and the final product (in this case, the pictures) that attest to the thought that goes into a gem like this. All control butons are well-placed, and clearly defined. The interface is very intuitive - you'll be shooting away long before you have to turn to the cd-rom manual (thankfully - would it be so costly to provide a printed book?) The default settings on this camera are excellent - but if we must, there are manual choices available.

My tip on that long strap: adjust the slide to create a wrist length, knot the cord above that and cut it off. As for a case, I'm using a neat leather cell phone case for a "flip" type phone. There are lots of them around: carry the camera with you and try some out till you get one that fits.Or maybe a vintage cigarette pack slip case.

Utlimately, this is a beautiful camera with features (like 5mp) that belie it's easy to handle price.

I've owned 4 different digital cameras in the last few years, but this is the first one that I'm in love with. Compact, light-weight, 5 MP, brilliant screen, ultra-stylish, easy to use, and takes two types of memory (SD and/or Memory-Stick). Add to that the nifty green light bars on front which zoom back and forth when it turns on (reminiscent of a certain talking car from an 80's tv show) How cool can you get?

Few things to note. The strap that comes with this camera is about 18 inches long...way too long for my tastes. The included memory is a very stingy and virtually pointless (in my opinion anyway) 16 MB.

So far the only really bad thing about this camera has been my difficulty in finding a case that isn't too big. I've tried everything from a pda case, to a mp3 player case, to a small camera case and they're all too big and bulky for this little beauty.

I can't say enough about this camera. I researched a load of models before buying it and have had no regrets. I've used Minolta film cameras for years and the G500 is a great addition for anyone. The 5 megapixels are astounding. I took a quick snapshot of a flower in my wife's garden and it came out looking like it could be on a poster or calendar.

The only feature I wish they had was a better battery meter. The one it comes with isn't precise enough to give you an accurate estime of how much battery time you have remaining. With that said I purchased a 256 meg memory card and can store more images then I know what to do with.

It's also incredibly small but very solid feeling. Yes the metal case gets fingerprints on it but so what? You can easily remove them with a cloth. One issue I have had to adjust to was the lens cover which slides to the right side of the camera and being right handed my fingers tend to cover the lens as it extends from the camera. I would occasionally brush the lens and leave a fingerprint it but I learned to open and avoid leaving smudges.

This 5 megapixel camera delivers stunning detail, and has more accurate and vivid color than any other camera I've owned. The camera is very small, has a startup time of about a second, and is the best value out there right now. I compared this camera to the Canon S400 and its competitors, and the decision was easy.

I've owned this camera for about a year now and can't honestly say that it was a good purchase.

Things I like most about this camera:

It's a tank - - rock solid, great design for a pocket camera.
Reasonably fast for spontaneous picture taking.
Great for vacations or on-the-go. You'll get great pictures without the wan-a-be photographer look - lugging ten pounds of gear to Jonnie's soccer match!

Things I don't like about this camera:

Because it's so small, you'll find you have several out-of-focus shots due to camera shake/movement as you take the snapshot. You won't find out until you load them up on your computer.
Forget the action shots -- tried many times to adjust using manual mode but all I get is a lot of blur and streaking (great artistic pics however).
You will discover many menus/features as you enter setup mode but you will also need the 200 page online manual to figure them out. For practical purposes you'll use the camera in auto mode and keep it there, unless you have a lot of patience and time on your hands.

In summary:

Great pocket camera for point-n-shoot use. Good for still shots, but not for anything that moves.

I used to have the oplympus stylus camera, and it was quite disappointing. Most of my pictures were blurry! Now, I am using this camera, and most to all my pictures are fantastic! I increased the exposure setting, and got even clearer/brighter pictures at night indoors! The flash helps the macro for more detailed & finer shots. This camera has a few main menus that lead to many options.The macro is great at 3mp & 5mp (there's no 4mp option). This camera takes both SD & memory stick! The only complaint is that the battery isn't long lifed, but just enough. The strap is long to wear around the neck & take pictures at the same time without worrying about the dropping the camera or losing it.

The Konica kd500z is the same camera. Minolta and Konica are one company now with the merger. I have used the camera for several weeks, finding that the pictures obtained were great. The zoom was great when capturing images, was even able to use the movie feature to capture realtime video of kayaker flipping in the rapids. No loss of resolution. I consistently use the 1600 X 1200 mode, and have used the higher settings. The images are spectacular, on the PC monitor, was obtain to enlarge images to view the smallest details. I waited 6 months to buy a digital. Glad I waited!

Got this camera as a result of the reviews on here. As a summary of what most of them seem to say. It's great, battery life is good, picture quality is spot on. I've even used both memory formats though I didn't think I would. The two problems that seem to have been noticed by other people is red-eye and the amount of time it takes to take a photo. Though I have had red-eye in photos it's never been a problem really and I've never really seen a camera that didn't have red-eye of some sort. As for time taken between shots, I've compared it to a 3MP camera and it was faster, it's slower than my previous camera but that was only 1.4MP which I think has something to do with it.